Gifts For the One Who Comes After

Gifts for the One Who Comes After

Ghost thumbs. Microscopic dogs. One very sad can of tomato soup . . . Helen Marshall’s second collection offers a series of twisted surrealities that explore the legacies we pass on to our children. A son seeks to reconnect with his father through a telescope that sees into the past. A young girl discovers what lies on the other side of her mother’s bellybutton. Death’s wife prepares for a very special funeral. In Gifts for the One Who Comes After, Marshall delivers seventeen tales of love and loss that cement her as a powerful voice in dark fantasy and the New Weird. Dazzling, disturbing, and deeply moving.

Awards

World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (Winner)Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection (Winner)
British Fantasy Award for Best Collection (Short-list)
Bram Stoker AWard for Best Collection (Short-list)
Aurora Award for Best Collection (Short-list)
Sunburst Award (Long-list)
Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize (Long-list)
Edge Hill Short Story Prize (Long-list)

The National Post

“Marshall is a master at bizarre, myth-infused scenarios that play on a reader’s subconscious in ways creepy and oddly pleasurable.”

What the Critics are Saying

"Gifts For The One Who Comes After should single out Marshall as one of the most accomplished writers of the fantastic being published today, an exceptional collection likely to be among the best 2014 has to offer."

"Marshall exhibits a bracing refusal to play to expectations, taking left turns where others would travel a straight line. It’s one thing to make the strange appear familiar; Marshall’s true gift lies in the opposite direction, where what was familiar is warped beyond recognition. “Magic is about waiting,” Marshall writes, “it’s about letting the bad things happen. It’s about letting the children pass on to adults, and the mothers grieve, and the fathers lose their way, or find it.” A quirky interpretation of the term, but this marvellously unnerving collection lends credence to the definition. Gifts For The One Who Comes After, saturated with tales of omens and curses, is a gift for the one who comes looking."

"Marshall is a masterful storyteller. … Her writing comes across as honest, and fearless, qualities which elevate her writing into the topmost tier of weird fiction being written today. . . . This is a must have collection for fans of weird literature, and is easily one of 2014′s best books."

"Marshall is a masterful storyteller. … Her writing comes across as honest, and fearless, qualities which elevate her writing into the topmost tier of weird fiction being written today. … This is a must have collection for fans of weird literature, and is easily one of 2014′s best books."

"Helen Marshall whispers in your ear when she fits the noose around your neck, filling you with wonder and dread, urging you into a startling, beautiful darkness. These stories — which sometimes feel more like spells—are the very best kind of unsettling."

Benjamin Percyauthor of Red Moon and The Wilding

"The acknowledgements page of Helen Marshall’s Gifts For The One Who Comes After reads like a who’s-who of contemporary genre authors and editors. Among her colleagues, friends, and early readers she counts Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin, Ellen Datlow, Michael Kelly, Stephen Graham Jones, Simon Stranzas and a great many others. What this list shows is a confirmation of why I’ve heard Helen Marshall’s name before: she is growing an impressive literary reputation. This, her second short story collection, comes hot off the heels of her first, Hair Side, Flesh Side, which was published in 2012 to a positive critical response. If nothing else, this newest book serves as proof that such a glowing reputation is well deserved."

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Support

I gratefully acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council for supporting a draft of Hair Side, Flesh Side through the Writer's Works in Progress Grant, the Canada Council for a Writing Grant, and the Toronto Arts Council for a Level Two Writer's Grant.